So apparently the big thing in hot American restaurant desserts is “crack pie,” which commands $44 per pie. Because I was intrigued, I made it for a dinner party we had last night.
It is basically a giant butter tart with a cookie crust rather than a pastry shell. I’m not gonna lie: the cookie crust definitely adds something to it. Of course, I knew that the first time I made cookie-crust butter tarts, which was maybe a decade ago.
In short, we did it first and we didn’t pretend it was worth $44 per pie, because that is not how Canada rolls.
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Hey, my mother has never made these with powdered sugar on top. CLEARLY that indicates the classiness, and thus the mark-up in price.
Crack pie is only worth $44 when it contains actual crack.
And here I thought the big thing for American pastry chefs was putting bacon in cookies. *rolls eyes*
Hey! Bacon Maple Bark is NOTHING to poke fun at, Robin. It’s serious business here in the Fat States of Fatty Fat.
The last big bacon thing I remember was wrapping your hot dogs in slabs of bacon, or something like that.
Now we have stuff like KFC making a sandwich where the bread is replaced with chicken. Bacon is just seen as an expected accessory these days.
I’ve made it too. I don’t think it’s worth $44 dollars, but I also don’t think it’s a knockoff of the butter tart. Rather, they’re both sugar custard pies, like chess pie or shoofly pie. Momofuku ramped up the dairy even more — butter plus heavy cream plus powdered milk.
I’ve tried tweaking the recipe, because it’s a pain in the keister, and the proportion they use seems to be a local maximum to produce a specific texture and mouthfeel.
I don’t know why, but for some reason the phrase “$44 per pie” makes me feel six years old.
Eh. Still love derby pie.
I’ve had it, yes, from Momofuku, and I can’t understand why the hell anyone would get a whole one. I split a $5 slice with a friend and that was just about the right amount, it was so rich.
Goddamn, it was delicious.
What’s not to love about a slab of caramel toffee on pastry, but it’s not worth $44.
For fun in butter tarts use Scotch and maple sugar over diced apple instead of the usual brown sugar and rum over raisins.
How much would a Canadian roll cost?
You do realize that the prices at a pretentious Manhattan specialty restaurant are going to be outrageously extreme right? Heck, just a normal meal in that city can have an obscene bill.
Of course, you’ve also got people fighting to sell the cheapest food as well if you know where to look, so there is that.
I dunno’. Thanks for the recipe links at least.
Echoing dirge’s manhattan comment. The last time I was there, their mcdonald’s didn’t even have a dollar menu, it had a ‘value menu’ where everything was at minimum $1.39.
–Rawr
yeah, dont really get the tone of this post being so indignant about one ‘cool’ spot in the most expensive city in the country selling something at a premium. my lady and i bake/cook all sorts of semi-fancy stuff and SHOCKINGLY small boutique stores sell similar things at a markup. maybe i am missing something here…
It’s not about the premium, it’s about the reception that it’s getting. Does Anderson Cooper talk about your semi-fancy stuff on Regis and Kelly? Has your semi-fancy stuff been written up in a major newspaper on the opposite coast? The shocking part isn’t that someone in NYC is charging $44 for a
chess piebutter tart, it’s that people not in NYC are paying $60 to get achess piebutter tart shipped to them. Sure, there are other places in NYC that will ship you a 10″ pie for $60, but none of them are getting the press that milkbar has gotten.…and has been getting for almost a full year now, so honestly I’m not sure why the point of this post isn’t “This is NOT NEW – crack pie is just a rip off of the crack pie recipe written up in the LA Times in February 2010!”